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Matt Harman and Ben Cramer 14 April 2010 TSOC 3000 M/W Dr. Kransdorf Homeschooling in the United States

The homeschooling debate is one that has been taking place ever since the founding of the United States and is still argued in education circles and courts today. The founders of America decided that the decisions on education should be up to individual families and local and state governments, thus the words education and school do not appear in any of the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Many of the famous inventors, writers, and politicians of our countrys history were taught at home either through mentoring, apprenticeships, reading, or conversation. By 1850, Massachusetts became the first state to institute a compulsory schooling law requiring attendance for children. Children were forced to attend school for many reasons, but the main focus for the law was to keep children out of the workforce and to teach them how to be model citizens. During this time many families, including common people, opted out of mass schooling in order to home school. Many parents in the nineteenth century used books such as Samuel Griswolds Fireside Education and Burton and Warrens Helps to Education in the Homes of Our Countries to help

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them as they educated their children in their homes and community. As the school days starting taking more of a childs time, parents and teachers began questioning if it would be better for children to spend time growing in other settings as well. In his book from 1912, The School in Your Home, A.A. Berle wrote that the American mass education had been a failure for the past twenty years and that many people had written to him about its shortcomings. He claimed to have many letters from parents asking for advice on how to teach their own children at home. From the 1920s to the 1970s, homeschooling was a relatively underground, usually rural, phenomenon. The topic would occasionally pop up in mainstream media, such as when it was featured in a two part series for Atlantic Monthly in the late 1940s, but remained a fringe topic during this period. This all changed in 1970 with the publishing of Ivan Illichs Deschooling Society. In his book, Illich did not call for an abolition of schools, but for the destruction of the compulsory attendance laws. This book helped to make John Holt, a popular education reformer, to question his ideas on education. In 1976 Holt wrote the book Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better as a way to show how to support people to learn without forcing them into a conventional education. Holt had decided after twenty years as an education reformist that the school system was doing exactly what most people wantedsorting students into economic winners and losers based solely on test scoresmaking reform a foolish pursuit. After reading Instead of Education, people from all over the country wrote to Holt to let him know he failed to mention an option in his book, which was homeschooling. Within a year after talking to these

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families, Holt created the magazine Growing Without Schooling (GWS), the nations first journal about homeschooling. With this publication, Holt realized that there were some people that chose to home school for reasons that he didnt personally support. For this reason Holt wrote in the second issue of GWS that What is important is not that all readers of GWS should agree on these questions, but that we should respect our differences while we work for what we agree on, our right and the right of all people to take their children out of schools, and help, plan, or direct their learning in the ways they think best. The work of Dr. Raymond Moore and his wife Dorothy also became well known during the 1980s. The Moores had already written about delaying formal education until at least the age of 10 based on their work with the Federal government and various universities. The Moores soon became vocal advocates for many homeschoolers, particularly Christian families. By the early eighties, more conservative and religious homeschooling publications and groups began to emerge, some as a result to the ideas of John Holt, and others as a way to avoid sending their children to what they saw as a godless monstrosity of public school. Homeschooling has continued to grow as it accommodates the differing factions, reasons, and political views that groups support, making it more of a mainstream choice rather than a radical move. The number of children being homeschooled has also grown from Holts estimate of 1520,000 children being taught at home to the nearly 850,000 children that are being homeschooled today based on a 1999 Federal Government survey. Based on this history, homeschooling has been an increasingly popular debate in education circles. With homeschooling there exist both disadvantages and advantages, the

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disadvantages being the time it takes to prepare and learn the curriculum, organizing where your schooling will take place, and also the regulations for parents. The advantages to homeschooling are that you know what your children are being taught, the ability to provide the education that works best for each child, and the ability to strengthen family bonds among many others. One of the biggest disadvantages to homeschooling is the time that it takes to plan and learn the curriculum that you want to teach to your children. Planning a lesson for one day and for one grade level can be a daunting task, let alone planning weeks at a time and for a variety of grade levels. As a teacher of your children, you have to take the time to write out what you want your children to learn each day. Once you figure out what you want to your children to learn, you as the teacher must make sure that you know the material as well. If you as the educator do not know the material, you need to take the time to study it on your own so that you can answer any questions that your children might have on a subject. This will also take a lot of time and determination to do. Now that you are ready to instruct your children, you have to decide where the schooling will take place. This question leads to another disadvantage of homeschoolingwhere will your children be learning. To be completely organized as a home school teacher it would be best to have a room that is solely set aside for teaching. This room needs to be education friendly with no distractions to take the attention away from the tasks at hand. Individual desks for each student, school supplies, and reference books are great things to have in this room. For some

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families, devoting a room to be a schoolhouse may be difficult. They may already be cramped in whatever living situation they are in and not have the feasibility of giving up a room. Another disadvantage to homeschooling that has been argued recently in courthouses across America is the regulations that parents have to follow in order to home school. In some states, such as Michigan, parents who decide to home school do not have to give any notification that they are doing so. This is much different from the State of California which had an appellate court rule in March of 2009 that parents who intended to teach their children needed to have a teachers license given to them by the state. However the real reason that this case came about was due to a possible child abuse case from a family that homeschooled. This area of child abuse does need to be monitored and can happen to any student regardless of the type of education they receive. A way to do this is by having a certified school official make home visits at regular intervals to make sure that the children are progressing and to look over the lesson plans that the parent has created. This helps to keep both parent and student on track and if any changes need to be made then the school official can suggest them at this time.

The first advantage to homeschooling is that you know what your children are being taught. Homeschooling parents in many states in the U.S. are able to choose their own curriculum without it having to be approved by the state. This gives the parent the ability to individualize the curriculum for their child. As a parent you do not have to worry about what your child is being taught in school. This is a big argument from Christian families. In many

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public schools, the curriculum involves evolution and other non-Christian viewpoints which are then instilled in the children. With homeschooling, a parent is able to teach the viewpoint that they want the child to know. In an interview with PBS, Corey Davis stated that, We don't like the idea of other people raising our kids. And we want to instill in them the values that we want to instill in them and not have somebody else subverting that. If a parent has a problem with creating a curriculum, many websites have been created to help in this area. On the website of the Home School Legal Defense Association (http://www.hslda.org), links are provided for lesson ideas and it also provides a curriculum market where homeschooling parents can share ideas that worked in their home. Another advantage to homeschooling is that parents have the ability to provide an education that works the best for their child. This is extremely important for children who may have a learning disability or a hard time grasping a concept. If this child was in a conventional school setting, they may not be given the attention that they need. They may not fit to the one size fits all way of teaching that has become our public school system. If they do not learn a concept or idea in the allotted time frame, then they will fall behind and be lost when the next lesson grows upon that concept. Another downfall with a conventional school is that they may not be able to accommodate a medically sensitive student. By homeschooling, a parent can educate their child while also monitoring the students health constantly. A child with attention deficit disorder (ADD) can also benefit from homeschooling by it allowing the parent to break up the day by having uniquely structured times of learning. Homeschooling can also provide advantages for students who are gifted and exceed the norm for their age group or grade level. In a normal school setting, if children are already learning above the grade level

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that they are in, then they are met with very few options to make them more challenged. On their website, the Home School Legal Defense Association provides links for parents for everything from Advanced Placement (AP) classes that are offered online to Correspondence Universities that offer classes for high school students. There is also a program called CollegePlus! which guides students through getting dual credit for both high school and college classes by taking CLEP and other exams. CollegePlus! also provides students with a coach to help mentor them in achieving their goals. The final advantage to discuss is that homeschooling helps to strengthen family bonds. By having all of your children homeschooled, the older children can often assist the younger children with their work. This causes the children to have a better respect for each other. In order to get everything accomplished in a day, the family must work together which helps to develop teamwork and also communication. In most homeschooling families, there are children of differing ages all being educated. This allows a home school student to learn to work with differing personalities, maturity levels, and characteristics. It also helps them to develop responsibility at a young age. These advantages and disadvantages were found not only through research done on the internet, but also by interviewing a local home school family. The mother who taught her children and her oldest daughter who was the first child homeschooled were interviewed. The mother is a college graduate with a degree in nursing while the daughter is also a college graduate with a bachelors in communication. They first started homeschooling in 1993 when the oldest daughter was first starting kindergarten. The mother at the time was employed full-

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time as a nurse and was consistently working three 12-hour shifts a week. They could not afford private school at the time and she was concerned that her schedule would not allow her to be involved in a public school classroom. They also wanted the Bible to be a part of the school process, so they decided after much prayer and talking to give homeschooling a try. After the first year, she stated that they connected with a private Christian school and have been affiliated with one ever since. Currently two of the mothers children have graduated with one more to graduate next year followed by four more in the years to come. When asked about the benefits that they saw to homeschooling, both individuals agreed that they enjoyed the one-on-one instruction that was able to take place. The mother also enjoyed being challenged to keep up on the subject manner and the reviewing of her own skills. The daughter that was interviewed also enjoyed being able to work at her own pace. She stated that as she grew older that more and more responsibility to complete her assignments on her own was laid upon her. This caused her to develop her time management skills and has helped her as she now is employed by two different organizations and is also self-employed as a private music teacher. She did however say that sometimes she did fall into the evil of procrastination but that her mother always made sure that she completed her requirements. The mother said that there were very few downfalls to homeschooling other than the great amount of time and preparation it took. She talked about how she is growing accustomed and comfortable with the curriculum but that it still requires discipline and a regular schedule. The last question that I asked the daughter was if she planned on homeschooling in the future and she responded that she would. She expressed that she

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wanted the same opportunity that her mother did to educate her future children in the way that she feels is best for them. In conclusion, homeschooling has both its disadvantages and its advantages. With the disadvantages however, most if not all can be avoided by taking the time to be disciplined and being organized to assure you accomplish all that is required of you as either a home school parent/teacher or child/student. To keep yourself accountable as a teacher and to avoid any critics who say that parents do not have the skills needed to teach, you can have a school official do home visits to confirm you are teaching your children what they need to learn. With this taken into effect, there is one main question that you need to ask yourself before you start homeschoolingare you willing to spend the amount of time it takes to give your child proper instruction and a quality education? If your answer is no, then homeschooling may not be the answer for you, but if you are willing to put forth the effort and dedication that homeschooling requires, then you may have found the ideal method of education.

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Bibliography: Conventional

Bauman, Kurt J. Home Schooling in the United States: Trends and Characteristics. 16 May 2002. April 2010 <http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/305/431>. Belfield, Clive R. Modeling School Choice: A Comparison of Public, Private-Independent. PrivateReligious, and Home-Schooled Students. June 2002. March 2010 <http://ncspe.org/publications_files/20_OP_49.pdf>. Collom, Ed. Home Schooling As A Social Movement: Identifying The Determinants Of Homeschoolers' Perceptions. 2003. March 2010 <http://www.usm.maine.edu/soc/collom/collom%26mitchell.pdf>. Family, Homeschool. Homeschooling Interview Ben Cramer. 11 April 2010. Farenga, Patrick. A Brief History Of Homeschooling. 2002. March 2010 <http://www.hsc.org/prohistory.php>. Holt, John. Growing Without Schooling. 8 September 2009. March 2010 <http://www.holtgws.com/>. Home School Legal Defense Association. Advocates for Homeschooling. 2010. March 2010. National Center for Education. Homeschooling in the United States: 1999. July 2001. March 2010 <http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001033.pdf>. Wikipedia. Homeschooling. April 2010. April 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#History>.

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Bibliography: Public Media

Abernathy, Bob. Religion and Ethics Weekly. 28 October 2005. April 2010 <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week909/special.html>. Gorn, David. Homeschooling Sparks Credential Debate. 7 March 2008. March 2010 <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87991836>.